It is increasingly common to design living quarters with a sensitivity to elderly and disabled persons. Many such persons are required to utilize wheelchairs and/or walkers to move from one location to another. (For purposes herein, the word “walker” is to mean an apparatus having rigid, vertical posts interconnected so that a person needing assistance in walking may lean on hand-grips at the top of the posts and move slowly along with the walker, like two interconnected canes disposed on either side of the person.) While wheelchairs and walkers greatly assist the mobility of elderly and disabled persons, use of wheelchairs and walkers within bathrooms or washrooms gives rise to significant limitations.
For example, a person sitting in a wheelchair and endeavoring to utilize a sink for cleansing is confronted with the problem of the sink being an inefficient horizontal distance away from the seated wheelchair user. Additionally, a standard construction height of an upper or working surface for bathroom sinks is most often thirty-six inches. However, persons using wheelchairs are frequently severely limited in their ability to move their upper torsos and have great difficulty using a sink having a set vertical height. Even worse, persons using a walker are almost invariably unable to lean forward a significant distance to efficiently use a fixed-position sink. Hence, such elderly and disabled persons are at risk of further injury and very difficult or inadequate cleansing as a result of known bathroom sinks.
Efforts have been made to produce vertically adjustable sinks to aid persons in wheelchairs. For example an “APPROACH” brand vertically adjustable sink is advertised by the POPULAS Furniture Company and can be seen on the internet at: http://www.populasfurniture.com/product/approach%e2%84%a2-adjustable-sink/ This sink, however does not help a user get closer to the sink on a horizontal plane. U.S. Pat. No. 8,424,128 that issued on Apr. 23, 2013 to Dvorak shows a “drawer containing a sink” for use in a larger sink cabinet structure as a small, limited use vegetable cleaning, or “veggie” sink. This sink, however, is constructed only for convenience in storing the small sink out of the way within the cabinet and has no capacity for use by persons with limited mobility in wheelchairs and/or walkers.
Accordingly, there is a need for a bathroom sink that facilitates cleansing by disabled or elderly persons using wheelchairs and/or walkers and that overcomes the deficiencies of known bathroom sinks